Embodiments of the present invention relate to beam shapers that are used, for example, in the field of illuminations and projective displays.
In many technical applications, compact illumination means are used nowadays that are, for example, part of a projective display or a projective display element. Here, projection areas associated with the respective device can be used as projection areas, such as a diffusely scattering projection screen, or also external projection areas can be used, for example a (diffusely) scattering wall of a room. Also, respective illuminations are used in further technical applications.
In many of these applications, light beams are generated by controlling individual or several light sources in different implementations, which are then parallelized by means of a collimator. By specifically controlling respective light sources, different pieces of information can be displayed on the respective projection area.
In many cases, collimation optics, i.e. optics for parallelization of beams of, for example, area light sources based on pyramid arrays or lens arrays have been used to obtain a directional beam profile. Here, the collimation characteristic, i.e. parallelization of beams emitted by the one or several light sources, is in the foreground.
US 2007/0002452 A1 describes, for example, a collimation microlens arrangement for usage with a background illumination display comprising a substrate and a plurality of microlenses at an output side of the substrate. A mirror-like reflective layer on the side of the substrate opposing the microlenses and the plurality of apertures in the reflective layer having direct correspondence with the microlenses of the lens arrangement are further included in the arrangement. Further, US 2007/0002452 A1 describes a production method where the apertures are generated in a self-aligned manner to with the microlenses illuminating the output side of the arrangement by laser light, such that laser light is focussed on the layer of the aperture by the small lenses of the lens arrangement. Thereby, holes or apertures are ablated into the respective layer.
Thus, 2007/0002452 describes a collimation microlens arrangement and a method for its production, where the production method just described generates a radiation profile, which is as even as possible, as is desirable for collimation optics. However, respective collimation microlens arrangements hardly allow generation of more complex radiation profiles.